Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA)
The purpose of Strategic Environmental Assessment is to ensure that the likely significant environmental effects of plans, programmes and strategies are assessed and taken into consideration during policy development.
The Scottish Government is the Responsible Authority for assessing whether the Scottish Climate Change Bill proposals require SEA and whether there are likely to be significant environmental effects. The Bill consultation proposals have to pass through a number of SEA stages. These are set out below.
Pre-ScreeningA plan is exempt is from the requirement to carry out Strategic Environmental Assessment if the Responsible Authority believes that the plan will have no, or minimal, environmental effect. The Scottish Government concluded that the Bill consultation proposals would have more than minimal environmental effect.
Screening
The next step is Screening. The Bill consultation proposals undergo Screening to assess whether or not implementing the proposals is likely to have significant environmental effects. After seeking the views of the Consultation Authorities (Scottish Natural Heritage, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and Historic Scotland), it was concluded that at least some of the proposals were likely to have significant environmental effects.
The Screening Report was published on November 1, 2007
Scoping Report
A Scoping Report was submitted to the Consultation Authorities setting out the scope and level of detail to be included in the Environmental Report.
The Scoping Report
Environmental Report
The SEA Environmental Report on the Scottish Climate Change Bill Consultation Proposals was subject to a public consultation that closed on April 23 2008.
The Environmental Report is the main output of the Strategic Environmental Assessment process. The Environmental Report sets out the results of the environmental assessment of the Bill consultation proposals, identifying and evaluating the likely significant environmental effects of implementing the plan and reasonable alternatives to it.